RUSSIAN COMMUNISM

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 251, 18 July 1921, Page 3

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM

ANARCHY, OR ANOTHER WAR? LENIN’S MOVEMENT TO THE RIGHT (By Tom Skeyhill in the "Sydney Morning Herald.”) If the Communist Government in Moscow suddenly collapses Russia will fall to pieces as completely as a barrel with the hoops knocked off. Then what will happen? Either she will Balkanise into a lot of little principalities and go up in the consuming flames of anarchy, with every man’s hand raised against his neighbour’s, with Gentiles pogroming Jews, with Communists massacring capitalists. with the mines filling with water, the fields -wasting in fallow, and the railroads crumbling in rust —until in an incredibly short time she will have receded into the darkness of the Middle Ages, and so receding render inaccessible to starving Europe all her rich sources of cheap raw materials —or she will be a vacuum into which Europe will be sucked. Poland will annex the Ukraine, Jaoan will claim Eastern Siberia, Turkey will seize Turkestan, the Baltic republics will plunder the north-east corner, and Germany and Franco will indubitably stick their fingers in the pie. They will all quarrel over the spoils; and then there will be another war.

I sav this in all seriousness, after having spent several months in and around Soviet Russia. In those several months I not onlv met and conversed with intelligent members of the different social strata in Soviet Russia, but I also had the privilege of long audiences with tho Primo Ministers of Latvia and Esthonia, with a high official on the Polish General Staff, and with numerous other European statesmen who are extraordinarily familiar with every thread in the tangled skein of present European politics. This has given me a unique opportunity of soaking myself in the evolving life of Russia, and in that of those other European nations whose destinies are inseparably dovetailed into that of the. once great Slav Empire. This first-hand knowledge, this intimacy' with the complex problem, has changed, aye. almost inverted, my early views. Before I went out to Central Europe I believed, ns so many millions of oiher people believed, that the Communists were the scum of the earth, and ought to be wiped out at any cost. How this was to be accomplished I was not quite clear, although I had rather hazy ideas of military intervention on tho part of the Allies, of economic penetration, of tho assassination of Lenin, or of an internal counter-revolution. Had I not gone out to Russia I would in all probability still be thinking along these lines; but now that I have been out I think differently. I think different because I believe that not one of these four weapons—military intervention, economic penetration, the assassination of Lenin, or counter-revo-lution—could be successfully employed against Communism; more than that, I firmlv believe that they would help rather than hurt the cause of tho Reds.

Military intervention would have been successful three years ago, but not to-day, for Kolchak’s, Wrangel’s, and Denikin’s attempts to restore tho monarchy, and Gtorgia’s, Poland’s, and the Baltic Republic’s efforts to break Russia up piecemeal, have aroused the indignation of tho Russians to such a pitch that they have flocked to the banner of Trotsky, and have backed him with such a moral and physical force that he has experienced but little difficulty in routing the enemy on all fronts. To-day there- are 7,066,000 Russians either in the field or in reserve; they are not Reds—they are simply patriotic Russians, who object to the dismemberment of their country, and to the efforts of adventurers to resurrect the rotten old system of the past. Time, a certain percentage are conscripts; they fight hard, nevertheless —they have to, fortheir parents and friends are held as hostages for their-conduct under fire. Europe has no army with which she could successfully attack this force. Even if, for argument's sake, we say that one White is as good as two Reds, that still leaves an army of three and a half million men to be raised; and where are they to come from? America will not contribute a single unit; British labour will not allow John Bull to send one soldier; and Germany is too afraid of France’s predatory spirit to be- of any material assistance. This leaves France, Italy, and the minor Powers. Between them they could not possibly raise an adequate army; and 90. no matter which way we look at it, military intervention is unthinkable. Nor has "economic penetration” any greater chance of success; Lenin is not fool enough to throw Russia wide open at present to tho agents of the counter-revolutionaries or to the envoys of Western thought. All trading with Russia for the next few years will be done either collectively through the Communist party or by moans of isolated and far-removed mining, oil, timber, and •fishing concessions. Counter-revolutions from within may succeed, but I am very, very doubtful; for bread is the sceptre in Russia to-day, and Lenin has tho bread; and the moment a revolt starts, all he has to do is to surround the revolting centre, isolate it, and then thr rebels into submission. The assassination of Lenin would be a colossal tragedy, for it would make a mnrtrr of him, and even if Communism collapsed with his death, it would soon appear again and again. Du-contented workinc mm tho world over would periodically resurrect him from the grave and start again where ho was forced to leave off. To martyr a cause, or the leader of a cause, is to If?*™* 0 T' And so the finest way to c-itahlieh Len n ism would be to assassinate Lenin or to overthrow him by force. Eliminating these four weapons as impracticable, we approach tha three rmaining solutions, or possible solution , of the problem—either the Communists will succeed, or fail, or modify their method and ideas of government. The first of these solutions—that they will succeed—we may at once dismiss as absurd. Three years of experiment..ng have proven- conclusively that munism, although ideal ni . I the " l i’ impossible in practice. While man IS man some men will bare more of th = world’s goods than others; an ‘ to say that this should not be, for suielj if a roan works more and saves than his neighbour, then he is rJ„nt.y entitled to more wealth than that neighbour. The toiler should be inoie rich lv rewarded than the idler, and the saver than tho squanderer. Deny th.s and you take away tho incentive to produce' and 'save. Russia’s condition to-day is a living monument to tho truth of these assertions. The peasants will not produce above «hat thev receive for their own consumption, for‘thev know -that if they do the surplus will bo taken away from them. At the same time, the labourer reafons that if all men, slackers and workers alii . are to be equally rewarded, why, then should he wear himselt out, why should he not take things easy and have a good time? And so the peasant does not bow, the worker lies down on his mb, and the result is starvation and death for the masses. Thus, if the Communists stick to their impossible theories, it is not a question of "will they collape ’’ but of "how much longer will it bo before they collapse.” Now, provided this collapse is not brought about time? And so the peasant does not occur too suddenly, it would be an acceptable solution of tho imyossib e ami altogether deplorable situation; tor if tho’Communist party, after three years and a half in office, collapses through the impracticability of Communism, then surely Communism will die for over. But, as I have previously pointed out, there is the danger of this collapse occurring too suddonly and before we have another form of central au-

thority to take its place; and so, tempting as it ia to leave the Communists to stew in their own juice, it is neveitiieless inadvisable for it is risking anarchy or another world war. This brings us to the final, and in, my opinion to tho very beet solution of Communism in Russia, and for that matter in the world. There must be a modification by Lenin of his whole idea, of government. Lenin started this experiment, and Lenin must finish it. If he fails’to do so, then it will finish him. He 'has no third course; either he stubbornly, blindly sticks to Communism, and sticking to it hurls himself, ana Russia, and maybe Europe back into barbarism, or else ho repudiates his former doctrines and moves to the Right until ho succeeds in steering the ramshackle Russian■ ship of State into the placid waters of decency and democracy, outside of which there is no port unless it is that of darkness. I believe that he realises this at last, and that even now he is ready .to reform, and by reform I mean he is prepared to abandon his ideas of world- revolution and overthrow of capital, and is even ready to recognise Russia b -original gold debt, to indemnify tho foreign investors he robbed, and purify the Soviet system of government. I base this belief of mine, that he will move to jhe Right, on the tone of his recent speeches, and on the conciliatory attitude he haa> adopted in his trade negotiations with England. They all show a marked leaning toward oonsei vatism. But Lenin alone cannot scrap Communism. Ho can repudiate it, it is true, but he cannot abandon it until ho wins over a majority of his followers; and that is going to be no easy matter. He has loaded Trotsky, Bukharin, Zmovieff. and some of tho other extremists "chock-full” of his early ideas of "overthrow of capital," "world revolution," "dictatorship of the proletariat, etc., and now he is going to have a "de’il o’ a time” unloading thorn, ahis is where the responsible governments of the world can take up the game. If they let Lenin know that they will recognisa his Government <lc facto, «nd later de jure, provided he abandons Communism, and makes the necessaiy reforms, then he K<> to his colleagues and win them over .to the Right with this fascinating bait of world recognition.